Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be defined as the “comprehensive approach organisations take to meet or exceed the expectations of stake-holders beyond such measures as revenue, profit and legal obligations. It covers community investment, human rights and employee relations, environmental practises and ethical conducts.”(Mullins,L,2010, Page 713).
An organisation within which there is a good example of CSR is tesco. Examples of CSR within tesco are :
Creating jobs, building careers
Tesco says that their growth means that their will always be jobs. They also state that their success has meant that their employees have a steady income and real security for themselves and their family. Tesco’s aim is to create locals jobs that will allow local communities to also share in Tesco’s success. Due to the size of tesco and their diverse range of jobs for employees, tesco state that they have in the last ten years created a job every 20 minutes. Lots of jobs have been given to people that have been unemployed for a long time and are being given the benefits of being a tesco employee. An example of this from tesco is that they state on their website that they have created 667 jobs for long term unemployed people through eight new registration schemes (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)
Healthy options, more choice
Tesco is always helping their customers to make healthy choices. They have done this by having new healthier ranges, and helping customers eat more fruit and vegetables and they provide better nutritional labelling on their products through which they encourage their customers to eat more healthily. Tesco is also encouraging people to do more exercise and have in the Last year got 7 million people active on an international scale though, aerobics in Thailand, football in China and charity runs in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This shows that they are encouraging customers to make healthier choices and trying to get people to be more active. (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)
A little care for the environment
Tesco is taking making effort to cut back on their direct impact on the environment and are also encouraging suppliers and customers to do the same. Tesco has stated that they pledge to be a zero carbon business by 2050. Some of the things that tesco are aiming to do in order to achieve this that they want:
· To halve carbon emissions from all new stores worldwide between before 2020 (compared with an equivalent store built in 2006)
· To halve emissions from our existing stores and distribution centres worldwide by 2020
· To halve the CO2 created per case of goods delivered worldwide by 2012 (compared with 2006)
This year we diverted 100% of our waste in the UK directly away from landfill. We also gave 120 products a carbon-label, to help customers make environmental choices. (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)
References
Mullins, Laurie, 2010, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Ninth Edition, London,
Tesco .com (2012) Tesco Corporate Social Responsibility [online] Available from:http://www.tesco-graduates.com/home/about/social-responsibility [Accessed 30 January 2012].
Tesco-graduates.com (2012) A little care for the environment [online] Available from: http://cr2010.tescoplc.com/environmental.aspx [Accessed 30 January 2012].
